


I hope that I don't fall in love with you

by vaguely_concerned



Series: Scoundrels and Thieves 'verse [26]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Epiphanies, Fluff and Humor, Genji Shimada is a Little Shit, M/M, Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, Pining, References to inappropriate use of lobsters, young mchanzo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 06:17:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14826944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguely_concerned/pseuds/vaguely_concerned
Summary: Jesse and Hanzo are stuck in an airport overnight because of a snowstorm - drinks and shenanigans ensue.





	I hope that I don't fall in love with you

**Author's Note:**

> Set approximately a year after they met for the first time.

Outside the huge windows the snowstorm kept howling like the tantrum of some weather god whose idea of creativity stopped at ‘just turn the dial up as far as it will go and call it a day’, a shifting wall of white rushing by behind the glass.

Inside the airport it was quiet, though, like the snow had settled in here too and was dampening all sound. Everyone moved with the weary yet unflappable tranquility of people who had accepted the truth that they were stuck here until the forces of fate and air traffic control saw fit to release them. Even the baby that was invariably crying somewhere in the distance sounded like it was mostly phoning it in for the look of the thing at this point. With the darkness pressing in on the airport it felt like being trapped in a high-tech cave of glass and concrete, the lights kept low and lulling.

Jesse was aching for a smoke, but the lady behind the bar had that ‘overworked and ready to commit murder with a cocktail strainer’ look about her and he wasn’t ready to stand outside in the roaring gale again until the bourbon had properly thawed out his bones. So instead he fiddled with the corner of the coaster and idly kicked his heels against the leg of the bar stool, keeping half an eye on the holo-set in the corner showing some kind of soccer game and otherwise watching the slow trickle of his fellow waylaid travelers flowing past.

He glanced away from a _thrilling_ 0-0 draw — Jesse wasn’t big into sports that didn’t involve horses at the best of times, and found that having to watch grown men aim for and fail to hit such a big target for ninety minutes straight was like sandpaper over his soul — to see Hanzo Shimada standing in the middle of the terminal, glaring at the flight information display screen. Jesse felt an instinctive twinge of amusement; there was no mistaking him, no other man could have so eloquently stared at a defenseless piece of technology like it had personally offended him and his entire family back several generations.

Hanzo looked no different than he had when they parted ways twelve hours ago, job well done and encrypted info on illegal weapons technology duly exchanged. Even in everyday clothes — well, what passed for it for him, anyway — he seemed… sharper than the people around him, like he’d been carved out of the world differently. Jesse leaned his cheek in his palm and took the opportunity to watch him without having to think about being watched back. Yeah, no, there really was nothing the clothes could do to hide the broad shoulders or the way he moved like he knew precisely where every part of his body was at all times. You could stick a hoodie on a wolf, but it wouldn’t make its teeth any blunter.

With his hair down and a look of peevish outrage on his face he looked younger and infinitely less forbidding, though, like said wolf caught using the drawstrings as a chew toy.

After a while he seemed to spot Jesse and stood for a moment completely still, as if making up his mind about how to react. Jesse decided to leave the choice to him and pretended he hadn’t seen him, instead taking a sip of his drink.

A minute or so later there was the sound of Hanzo clearing his throat, and Jesse glanced up to find him standing close by, snow melting on the shoulders of his coat.

“Oh. Hey there.”

“Hello again,” Hanzo said, letting his bag fall to the ground with a thump and the tiniest hint of clanking metal — Jesse tried to keep out of his mind how many lethal weapons he could keep stowed in there, security be damned. Not that he needed them to be the deadliest guy in the airport. Any airport.

“We keep meetin’,” Jesse agreed, tilting his head to the side. “You having a drink?”

“Why,” Hanzo asked, sitting down on the bar stool next to Jesse, “are you buying?”

Jesse let out a surprised huff of laughter — now there was a tone he’d never heard from him before. If he didn’t know any better he’d say that that was a touch of playfulness.

“Sure,” he said. “If the next round’s yours.”

“Of course. Have they said anything over the intercom?”

Jesse shrugged. “Nothin’ encouraging.”

Hanzo gave a dissatisfied grunt and ordered a drink after a perfunctory scan of the list. He checked his phone while he waited, his brows drawn together irritably.

“Good luck with that, the only forecast you’re likely to get is ‘disappointment with a chance of confused meteorologists’,” Jesse told him. At Hanzo’s surprised blink he added: “Checked it before. You know you’re fucked when they ain’t even had the time to give the storm a name before it hits. We’re right on the outskirts of it as it passes, though, so with a bit of luck we’ll be good to go before noon tomorrow.”

That same impenetrable blinking for a few seconds and then Hanzo gave a breath of laughter and put the phone down, accepting his Old Fashioned with a short ‘Thank you’ when the lady handed it to him. “I see.”

“Guess we’re stuck here at least overnight, huh,” Jesse said.

“It would appear so,” Hanzo sighed, running a hand through his hair to push it away from his face — it fell sleekly over his shoulder and down his back. His cheeks and the tip of his nose were still pink from the cold outside.  

Strangely enough the confirmation that they were indeed trapped seemed to calm him down more than anything. He took a sip of his drink and wrinkled his nose, though it didn’t stop him from going in for another straight after.  

Hanzo shrugged the coat off and rolled up his sleeves, the tattoo clearly visible on his left forearm. Jesse found himself wrapped up in the design, tracing the interlocking patterns with his eyes when Hanzo wasn’t looking — he’d been trying to get a better look ever since that first time he’d noticed it, when it had been way too dark to make out details and a smear of blood had obscured parts of it. Now that he could study it freely he decided the design suited the man, stark and bold and wound tightly in on itself in ways that didn’t look entirely comfortable.

Eventually Hanzo seemed to sense Jesse’s gaze on him and raised an eyebrow, glass halfway to his lips.     

Jesse tore his eyes away and cleared his throat, leaning his elbows on the table. “You gonna get in trouble with your folks over this?”

“Hm?”

“We were already runnin’ kinda late before. Can’t imagine they’ll be happy with this little delay.”

“I… may have some explaining to do when I get back.” He stared into thin air, as if contemplating this, then grimaced and knocked the rest of his drink back in one go, waving for another even as he swallowed.

“Whoa,” Jesse said, equal parts impressed, perturbed and feeling his throat burn in sympathy.

Hanzo gave an acknowledging shrug and started in on the new drink with infinitesimally more restraint, sipping it like a man on a grim quest to escape the dingy shallows of sobriety. “It has been… a long day. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Do you have no one back home to answer to?”

Jesse made an indifferent sound. “Sure, but so long as I get the job done they don’t care much one way or the other how I get there. Would probably start askin’ around for me if I didn’t turn up in a week or so, though. At least I’d like to think so.”

“...an interesting way to run things.”

“I’m a bit of a special case,” Jesse admitted, shrugging. “And I’ve earned it, too. We’re not all charmingly free spirited mavericks like me, though, believe it or not; some of the guys actually do numbers and spreadsheets and shit.”

“Thank heavens,” Hanzo said, “I am not sure the world is big enough for more than one of you.”

When Jesse looked at him there was a smile playing on Hanzo’s lips even as his eyes were drawn and weary, a disarmingly charming expression just from how pleased he looked at his own joke.

“You know, like in your movies? ‘This town isn’t big enough for the both of us’? Dramatic duels at dawn?” He made the most deadpan finger gun Jesse had ever seen and lifted his eyebrows.

“Yeah, I, uh, I thought I caught your reference there,” Jesse chuckled, swirling his drink around in his glass. “You have watched a few Westerns in your time, then? You been holdin’ out on me?”

Hanzo gave a grunt and took a sip of his drink. “None that did not involve assless chaps and only the R-rated kind of riding. No horses in the picture, though.”

It was a near thing that Jesse didn’t snort bourbon through his nose. Hanzo’s smile widened almost imperceptibly.

If you’d asked Jesse before tonight about Hanzo Shimada’s defining qualities, his sense of humor would not necessarily have come up. The aloofness might, as well as the way he walked and talked like he knew, in a disinterested, blasé sort of way, exactly the most efficient way to kill anyone he set his eyes on if needed — the sparkling repartee, not so much. Jesse had always felt that slinging jokes in his direction was like appealing to a vaguely condescending brick wall. Well, more fool him; one on one and devoid of any business to discuss the guy could be hilarious, not even unintentionally, in a way that careened merrily between the sharply observed and the delightfully mean, though the worst of the nihilism eased once he started in on the third drink.

“So you’re telling me,” Jesse said, squinting at Hanzo’s face, “that you had to stay in character as a delivery boy for a _month_ before the guy finally let you in?”

“It was the only way to get close enough to him,” Hanzo shrugged. “A deeply paranoid man. Rightfully so, of course, he had made some powerful enemies through his stupidity and greed.”

“Wow, Mr. Shimada, tell us how you really feel.”

Hanzo made a little face that clearly said _‘Eh, what can you do, there’s no helping some people’._ It was the kind of expression that held the ennui and world weariness of a much older man — Jesse suspected Hanzo had been born with it already preprogrammed into him. “If he had been as willing to learn to cook for himself after divorcing his wife as he was setting up diabolical and deadly security systems… I might have had a lot more trouble. He used his last words to complain he had not ordered pepperoni.”

Jesse had a vivid, inexorable mental image of Hanzo dressed up as a pizza boy scowling daggers under the cap; he had to rest a hand over his mouth before he made a sound he might regret, though Hanzo picked up on it anyway.  

“I am glad you seem to find it funny. I did not see the humor in it at the time.”

“I can see how you wouldn’t,” Jesse said, strangled. Pushing his luck he asked: “You keep the uniform, at least?”

Hanzo grimaced into his drink. “Perhaps you and Genji should get together sometime and create your own comedy act. He asked me the exact same thing when I got back.”

“I knew that kid was alright,” Jesse beamed. “Good instincts.”

“Apart from having to endure your comedy it was a temporary indignity only and the job went smoothly from there. I did get a commendation from my employer several times,” he added, as if he’d only just remembered. “Had to all but fight off a promotion before I left.”

“Well then, at least you know you got a job waitin’ for you if this industry goes tits up in these peaceful Overwatch times. More than you can say for some of us. Ain’t got too many marketable skills outside of… this whole deal,” Jesse said, catching himself before saying ‘ _shootin’ people in the head’_ as the bartender passed by on her way to another customer.

Hanzo made an unconvinced sound in his nose. “Oh, I would not be so sure of that. One does a lot of people watching in our line of business. You develop a knack for working people out, which is usually half the battle. Take that one,” he said, gesturing discreetly in the direction of a corner table with a lone businessman whose only crime, as far as Jesse could tell, lay in a supremely bland taste in ties.

“What about him? You find his fashion sense personally offensive?”

“Obviously, but beyond that he is clearly having an affair.”

Jesse squinted at the guy, finding that despite looking gracelessly and resignedly middle aged there was no lipstick on his collar, literal or figurative. “Oh, clearly.”

Hanzo, taking this as a challenge, held his head higher and appraised the man as a renowned art critic might the results of a ‘Watercolors For Complete Beginners’ course. “Hm. The first thing he did after sitting down was remove his wedding ring. Two phones, two separate credit cards, which — oh, how embarrassing, he still mixes up on occasion, so this _fling_ might be a recent development…”

The guy sat there mortified while the server reset the card machine; Hanzo rested his chin in a studiously dispassionate palm and kept going.

“Generally surreptitious and flighty manner, so perhaps very recent at that, could be he is not entirely sure his new flame will show up — a newly bought and expensive if, hm, _inadvisable_ outfit, a rather sad attempt at styling what remains of his hair, but I suppose there is something to be said for the nobility of doing what you can with what you have…”

Jesse bumped their shoulders together, chuckling despite himself at the sheer unfiltered disdain. “Okay, Sherlock, I get it. You can stop showin’ off.”

Hanzo shrugged and abandoned the theatrical thinking posture, sitting up straighter again. “Of course most cases are not quite so blatantly, pathetically obvious.”

“You really don’t like this guy, do you.”

A stiffening of his back, almost unnoticeable if you weren’t paying attention — perhaps he thought no one was. “I dislike disloyalty. If you have made the decision to devote yourself to something or someone, you stay true to it.”

“Well, I dunno. I’ve seen too many people stay loyal to their own misery. To bad places, or bad times, or bad people. Sometimes you gotta know when to fold ‘em and walk away, y’know?”

Hanzo glanced at him with sharp, dark eyes from behind the curtain of his hair, something written nakedly in his expression that Jesse didn’t know how to read.

“Not that goin’ behind the back of someone you’ve promised the whole ‘to have and to hold’ thing to isn’t a certifiably shitty move, it ain’t the way a man oughta treat his partner,” Jesse clarified, holding his hands up in easy concession and leaning back to show he didn’t mean to make an argument out of it. “Just sayin’ that there are some things that loyalty doesn’t… well. You see enough shit, it makes you wonder.”

“Hm.”

The corner of Jesse’s mouth wanted to twitch up — he’d known the man for almost a year now, and those little ‘hm’s still remained completely opaque to him.

Hanzo touched his arm and tilted his head towards their new friend with the bland tie. “Ah. Observe.”

The guy was still fiddling with his two credit cards when a woman — slightly younger than him and looking excitedly nervous in high heels — came over to his table, and in his rush to hide them away he almost ended up putting his mouth on her nose when she went in for a chaste kiss.

Hanzo gave a little ‘ta-dah’ wave with such withering sarcasm that it was a miracle the guy didn’t collapse on the spot. “See? He may be unfaithful, but he respects his wife and her intelligence enough to go out of his way to hide it. Touching, in its own way. Perhaps there is something to salvage there yet.”

Shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter, Jesse brought his glass to his mouth but had to put it down again before he spilled booze all over himself. “You’re a cynical, cynical man, Mr. Shimada.”

“As cynical as any man who endeavours to see the world clearly.”

Jesse nudged his knee against Hanzo’s under the bar, inclining his glass towards him. “What’s that thing ‘bout how… behind every cynic there’s a disappointed idealist or whatever? Is there really no romance in your soul, sir?”

Hanzo quirked a strange little grin — he glanced at Jesse out of the corner of his eye and held out his glass too. “An odd question to ask a man who studies swordsmanship in this day and age.”

Jesse tipped his head to the side in acknowledgement and touched their glasses together with a clink, taking a sip. In his precise, certain way Hanzo pushed his hair away from his face, still that look about him like he was entertaining some private amusement.

“Such incisive commentary is enough to have me worryin’ what you see when you look at me,” Jesse said, meaning it as a joke. “Starting to think I’ll have to plant some red herring backstories to keep you off my trail. On an unrelated note — I ever tell you ‘bout how I was found as a baby by a circus elephant and was raised by a happy triad  of clowns, knife throwers and fire eaters? The good ol’ ‘secretly a Russian princess all along’ ditty? How I got this scar?”

“You,” Hanzo said, the slightest slur to his words now when he didn’t watch it, “are… strange, mostly.”

When he finished laughing Jesse said: “Yeah, I’ve been reliably informed.”

Hanzo pursed his lips thoughtfully, looking at him with what seemed like honest curiosity. “It does not trouble you, then.”

“If it did I’d be nothin’ but troubled all the livelong day,” Jesse said. “Lotta effort, low payoff. Not like I’m ever gonna pass as anything but what I am for any length of time anyway. Might as well work with it.”

Hanzo smiled, his cheeks flushed with the booze and dark hair loosely gathered over one shoulder. He looked different when he smiled for real, almost surprised, like his face had just received an unexpected but not unwelcome visitor.  

Jesse found himself smiling back.

“You, uh, you hungry?” Jesse asked after a while, without quite knowing why. “‘Cause I could murder a burger right about now.”

Hanzo blinked slowly at him. “...it is nearly two in the morning.”

“It sure is,” Jesse agreed. “You can have some of my fries, if you’d like,” he added, in the name of sweetening the pot.

After a moment of deliberation Hanzo shrugged. “Who am I to refuse such a deal. Lead the way,” he said, hopping down from the bar stool and gathering up his things.

 

———

 

After they finished eating they drifted aimlessly through the terminal for a while before settling down on a bench in an isolated corner, Jesse giving up on what remained of the ketchup splotch on the thigh of his jeans and tossing the paper napkin in the trash. He felt full and warm and oddly at peace with the world at large, and not just because of the booze or the fact that he’d gotten to see Hanzo Shimada — a man whose name was whispered with fear and deference in certain parts of the underworld — make fun of his smoking habit by way of creative application of a french fry not ten minutes ago. The image of Hanzo holding the fry between his fingers like a cigarette and giving a bad imitation of Jesse’s drawl would keep him warm on cold and lonely nights.

Their conversation had petered out to become a comfortable lull, and when Jesse glanced over at him Hanzo was glaring intensely at the opposite wall — almost, Jesse noted, like someone desperately fighting to keep their eyes open.

“Y’know,” Jesse ventured, having observed this internal battle for a while and taking pity, “you can have a snooze if you’d like. I’ll keep a lookout for any questionable characters headin’ our way.”

“Hm?”

“When life gives you jetlag, make a night shift, right?” Jesse said, waving at what he felt sure were the impressive dark circles under his eyes. “I’m not gonna be sleepin’ anytime soon anyway.”

Hanzo blinked in consideration for a while, then gave a ‘fair enough’ head tilt and leaned back. If he was anything like Jesse he probably had the chip with the data they’d traded somewhere on him, close to the skin, but he made a loop with the shoulder strap of his bag anyway and hooked his foot into it. Then he settled into perfect stillness with uncanny immediacy, arms folded over his chest and a look on his face like he was preparing to make Mr. Sandman an offer he couldn’t refuse — since Hanzo’s eyes were closed anyway Jesse allowed himself a grin.

He rooted around in his bag to fish out the holovid, booting it up and navigating his way to the giant trove of video files he’d downloaded — extremely illegally — when he was eleven and had kept around and up to date ever since for occasions such as this. His logic had always been that should the war break out again he’d better be able to watch every decent Western ever made before the nuclear winter finished him off.

Hanzo drifted off quickly, if the way his breathing changed to be calmer and deeper was any indication, though he still looked stiff and tensed up. Occasionally he would let out a small, hilariously dainty sniffle as he shifted; Jesse was delighted to learn that even while far off in Dreamland he managed to look faintly peeved.

Jesse started the movie and let his brain slide into the comforting groove of the familiar plot. Sinking down on the bench he settled in, crossing his legs at the ankles and stretching out as much as politeness allowed.

When the first movie ended he put on the next one, whistling to himself under his breath as the title screen flashed to life. In his sleep Hanzo slid down the bench until his temple rested on Jesse’s shoulder — for a couple of mad, serene moments Jesse’s body acted like this was the most natural thing in the world. In fact it decided to just sit there for a while, smiling faintly down at the top of Hanzo’s head. They were close enough now that he could smell him, warm and clean and strangely graceful even after what must’ve been a couple of days of travel and half a night in the airport bar. Maybe the mystical mumbo-jumbo the Shimadas shrouded themselves in wasn’t all smoke and mirrors after all and the man was actually magic. It was either that or a really well picked aftershave.  

(Jesse might’ve had more to drink than he’d thought at this point, he recognized absently.)

Huh.

…wait a fucking second.

Jesse’s _brain_ felt a slow, indomitable wash of horror as it realized that what his body had meant to do was pull Hanzo in closer where he’d lie more comfortably and securely against his side before turning back to the movie.

Jesse stared into the middle distance for a long time. At one point an elderly lady walked up to him and asked him in hushed tones if he was feeling well.

“Never better, ma’am,” he said hoarsely, realizing too late that he’d sort of leaned back into Hanzo’s weight as if to seek out something sure and steady under her mild, concerned gaze.

She patted his knee. “I get like that myself,” she said wisely. “Put away enough gin beforehand and you’ll sleep through most of the flight anyway. I’m sure your young man won’t mind if he knows you get that worked up about it.”

Jesse made a strangled sound in his throat and nodded, smiling a fixed, manic smile.

As she winked at him and walked away Hanzo sighed in his sleep and turned his face further into Jesse’s shoulder — a soft, trusting gesture that had Jesse dizzy because...well, you wouldn’t know it to look at him, would you, that there could be that kind of easy sweetness in him. Normally you got the impression that he was the kind of man whose most pressing reason, at any moment, not to stab you to death was the potential dry cleaning bill, and nothing about that could prepare you for _this_.

Some locks of hair had fallen into his face, silky over sharp features. Jesse kept very still and watched him.  

 _You deserve better_ , Jesse thought nonsensically, out of the blue, Hanzo’s face as he talked about loyalty flashing through his mind. Was loyalty really the word for it when you gave them everything and they seemed all too happy to take it and give nothing back?

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before Hanzo gave a low sleepy sound and seemed to come awake. As he stirred he tilted away; Jesse hurriedly inched away before Hanzo’s eyes blinked open, desperately trying to pretend that his side didn’t suddenly feel very cold and lonely. He crossed his legs at the ankles and sank back against the bench, staring fixedly at the holovid as if it was the most interesting thing he’d ever laid eyes on.

With a grunt Hanzo sat up, rubbing at his neck with a pained expression.

“Welcome back,” Jesse said, hoping his grin seemed natural enough to hide the fact that everything inside him was currently one long incoherent scream.

Hanzo smiled slightly and rolled his shoulder, working out the stiffness. “Thank you. Happy to be here.”

The scream in Jesse’s head rose to a violent crescendo at the easy sarcasm. Hanzo glanced down at the holovid for a second with an unreadable expression, then squinted at the big hologram clock over by the entrance, moving his neck like he was smoothing out a crick. He looked over at Jesse. “Hm. It is still only four.”

Jesse’s heart gave a thrill at the barest indication of a raised eyebrow, the invitation slyly offered and easily ignored if unwanted. “Ah, the night is still young, then. You up for another round, Mr. Shimada?”

“‘Hanzo’ is fine,” he said, getting to his feet in one mesmerizingly sure, fluid movement. “And absolutely. I have nowhere else to be.”

 

———

 

The bartender seemed both amused and unimpressed to see them again, but she acquiesced readily enough when Jesse grinned and told her to leave the bottle.

“Promised to buy you a drink, right?” Jesse said, waving Hanzo off when he started to say something and pushing a glass towards him. He felt sure he needed to be much drunker if he were to survive the night in this state.

Hanzo tasted the admittedly dirt cheap bourbon and wrinkled his nose. “...interesting,” he said, with the very faintest veneer of politeness the human voice could bestow to cover up the disgust.

“A free drink is a free drink, ain’t it?”

Jesse noted that Hanzo’s expressions changed after a few drinks — normally he looked like he meant to constantly school them even if the results were varying, any flicker of emotion the result of a momentary slip-up and immediately, angrily squashed, but tonight that mask had definitely fallen off somewhere along the way. It looked good on him, that new unrestrained expressiveness. Now that he knew the signs to look for Jesse was pretty sure he could start to pick up on them in a sober Hanzo too. “An excellent point. I apologize for my brashness before, keep it coming.”

“You got it, friend,” Jesse said and topped up his drink.

The nap seemed to have given Hanzo a second wind. There was more of a swagger to him now, a tiny lift of his chin. They talked shop for a while, in a vague and euphemistic dance to avoid saying anything that’d have someone in the bar calling the cops on them, then somehow ended up derailed enough that they were talking about the history of their respective countries in the eighteen seventies the next time Jesse checked in with himself and realized he was having fun. In his surprise he ended up stuttering to a halt; when Hanzo gave him a questioning look he floundered for something to say.

“Y’know, I keep meanin’ to ask,” Jesse said, hoping it covered for his momentary distraction and current existential horror at how charmed he was by Hanzo explaining, in his sardonic, clipped manner, the finer details of the military reforms of the Meiji restoration. “What’s the deal with the sword ‘n the bow ‘n stuff? Not that you’re not pulling it off like nobody’s business, but isn’t it a little… old fashioned?”

Hanzo wrinkled his brow thoughtfully, tapping his fingers against his glass. He looked Jesse over from boots to hat and back again; Jesse fought the urge to squirm under the inspection. “...was that a serious question?”

“Huh?”

That private half-smile from before returned, something brightening in his eyes. “Apparently it was. Hm. I suppose it is a little old fashioned, at that. But you never know — perhaps there is still a future for anachronisms.” He blinked slowly — well, he did have a few drinks under his belt at this point too, built like a brick shithouse though he was. “It is also a smidge quieter and more discreet than the hand cannon you carry around.”

“I’ll not sit here and listen to you besmirch my gun just ‘cause your taste skews more medieval,” Jesse announced. “Peacekeeper’s served me plenty well through the years, thank you very much.”

“I am sure it has. And I am even more sure that my ‘medieval tastes’ would still have you beat every time.”

“Would it, now?”

“In fact I am perfectly willing to put money on it,” Hanzo said, leaning forward, a glint in his eye that made Inner Jesse whimper. “Any contest, at any time.”

“Oh ho ho,” Jesse said, casually pushing his hat back on his head as his heart raced against his ribs, “you better believe that all that stands between you, an empty wallet and complete humiliation in this very moment is the laws of this land frowning on firin’ guns in public places.”

Hanzo gave a faux-haughty huff, eyes glittering. “A pitiful excuse.”

Jesse felt the grin bright on his face and leaned forward too. “Hey, gimme a time, place, and somewhere to dump the evidence and we’ll see ‘bout that.”

“That can be arrang — ” Hanzo stopped, a frown appearing on his brow.

“What’s up?” Jesse asked after a while, realizing suddenly how close their faces were now.

“I just had a strange feeling that — ”

Hanzo’s phone called out shrilly, a dozen times or so in quick succession. With the air of someone stepping up to the scaffold and giving the hangman a meaningful look to get it over with already he checked it.

After a few moments he picked up his drink, finished it in one go, poured himself another and then leaned forward to rest his forehead against the bar, the image of a beaten man.  

“Uh…” Jesse said, tentatively resting a hand on Hanzo’s shoulder. “You okay?”

“My feeling was right,” Hanzo murmured, holding out the phone without lifting his head. “My brother is indeed disgracing himself and our entire family as we speak.”

“What, your Genji sense was tinglin’? You felt a great disturbance in the Force?”

Hanzo gave a mirthless bark of laughter. Jesse stared at the bared line of his neck, stumbling over the fact that he could barely remember ever wanting anything as much as he wanted to brush his lips there, to hear a breath of real laughter in response. The physical contact before had woken something inside him that had slumbered for a long time; he couldn’t remember ever longing for anyone to just… touch him before. It was easily the third most pathetic he’d felt in his entire life, sitting there yearning for what was likely one of the most dangerous men in the world to rest a hand on his shoulder, even for a few seconds.   

He felt vaguely that his brain had broken or something.

Taking the phone he glanced down at the screen, then flinched back like he’d been stung by a wasp.  

“Dear lord,” Jesse said, tilting the phone and then his head to try to make more sense of the image, morbidly fascinated. “The hell’s he doin’ with that lobster? How would that thing even fit down the front of his… huh. _Well._ ”

Hanzo just whimpered, burying his fingers in his hair. “Keep going.”

Jesse flipped through the next few and whistled under his breath. “Well, someone’s havin’ more fun than us tonight, at least. Didn’t even know they made drinks with that many colors. Who’s the young lady with the… ”

“I have absolutely no idea.”  

“Fair enough, that’s — whoa there,” Jesse said, hurriedly skipping one. “Don’t mean to be rude or anythin’, but that’s, uh, that’s more of your brother than I ever needed to see.”

“I know the feeling,” Hanzo said. “For what it is worth I think he sent that one by mistake. My name must be close to one of the girls he is… dating in his contact list, it would not be the first time.”

“‘One of’, huh. One of _those_ situations.”

“Enough of ‘those’ to fill an entire four act comedy of errors.”

Helpless against the depths of resigned despair in Hanzo’s voice Jesse chuckled. “Sounded like you saw this comin’, somehow.”

“It is a special instinct I have developed,” Hanzo told the tabletop earnestly. “I can feel Genji shaming every single one of our ancestors from half a world away.”

Jesse snorted, squinting to make out an image distorted by blurred lights and excessive photo filters and deciding it might be a nightclub actively, literally on fire.

“Of course it is partly a matter of always being prepared to expect it,” Hanzo continued vaguely, sitting up. “Statistically I usually turn out to be right. Mathematics. You know how it is.”

“Least he’s kept his pants on in this one,” Jesse said philosophically, flicking through the last few messages to find that Genji had gone the extra mile by making a holo gif so the nipple tassels could have their full, animated effect.

“Sometimes,” Hanzo said, in a way that suggested he wouldn’t have done so sober, “it feels like he does it specifically to spite me. To get a rise out of me, rubbing it in my face just to show me that _he_ can. Which is naturally ludicrous because I doubt he has ever thought that deeply about anything in his entire life, but it does not stop it from being… annoying.”  

Jesse put the phone down, intrigued by the minefield stretching out before them. “Is there anything in those,” he waved towards the phone, “that you’d actually want, though?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hanzo snapped, though Jesse didn’t take it personally as the ire was clearly not actually directed at him as much as the very concept of the question. “It’s pathetic. But he stands free to do anything he wants and chooses to _squander it_ on…”

He stopped himself, looking down at his hands tightly curled on the bar. With deliberate movements he unfurled his fingers, though the tension still ran through them like piano wires — some part of Jesse, having already barrelled through the first stages of grief and resting now in depressed acceptance, recognized that his hands were extremely nice, strong and sure and well shaped. He wished he could have managed to dwell in the tranquil valleys of denial at least until boarding his flight, but there you were. “No matter.”

“Hey,” Jesse said. “He’s just bein’ young and dumb. When’s the last time you saw each other?”

Hanzo shrugged. “Weeks ago. Half a month or so, maybe. Why?”

“You call him in all that time?”

“No. I doubt he would pick up if he knew it was me.”

“Maybe he wanted to get your attention somehow and thought actin’ like a dumbass was the way to go about it,” Jesse offered. At Hanzo’s blank, uncomprehending stare he quickly added: “Hey, what do I know, though, I’m just some random idiot with a neat hat.”

Hanzo, in a very un-Hanzo move, looked unsure. He fiddled with the edge of his sleeve, staring into the middle distance.

“I never know why he does what he does,” he said finally. “We… do not speak much anymore.”

“You used to?

Hanzo shrugged again, a tight, constrained little gesture. “Some. More. When we were boys. Before — hm.”

Jesse nodded, watching him out of the corner of his eye — he’d ducked his head again, as if going into hiding behind his hair, shutting himself off. There was an ache in Jesse’s chest, some puzzle pieces falling into place and making a pretty sad picture in his head. It seemed weird now that he’d found the guy so inscrutable and overbearing in the beginning. Considering where — who — he came from, it was maybe a wonder he had any urge left to connect to anyone else at all.

“Should I…” Hanzo furrowed his brow as if doing complicated calculations in his head and looked up. “...answer him?”

“Why not? What’s the worst that can happen?”

“You saw the nipple tassels, why would you underestimate him like this,” Hanzo said immediately, but he was tapping something out on his phone with a thoughtful expression. “I — would asking him to stay safe count as nagging, do you think?”

“Just like that? Shouldn’t think so.”

Hanzo made an absent-minded sound of gratitude and kept writing. There was something horribly endearing about the way he picked each character like he was setting down important messages in stone that people would see and judge for generations to come.

For a while Hanzo stared down at his finished message, a doubtful downward curl to his mouth. Finally he mumbled: “Perhaps I should not encourage…”

“Hey,” Jesse said, touching Hanzo’s shoulder. “Don’t think about it too hard. Just send it.”

“Is that your professional opinion?” Hanzo said sardonically, though there was a grin lurking in his voice.

“As someone who ain’t never thought too hard about anythin’ in my entire life,” Jesse agreed, bringing his free hand to rest over his heart, “you’d be surprised how often it works out.”

Hanzo chuckled, letting his head fall to one side. After a moment he pressed ‘send’ and put the phone face down on the table, giving a small sigh. “There.”

“And would you look at that, the world didn’t even end,” Jesse beamed, snickering when Hanzo aimed a cheerful kick at his shin.

He had his hand on Hanzo’s shoulder and Hanzo wasn’t shaking him off, wasn’t even acting like it was strange, just looked at him with eyes that were tired and soft with booze and still warmed by a small, rueful smile.

There was a chime of longing in Jesse’s chest, at first unbearably gentle like a bell struck by butterfly wings, but deepening, a call that couldn’t be silenced because it rang through his bones.

 _Fuck,_ Jesse thought, giving Hanzo’s shoulder a squeeze before pulling his hand back _. I am so screwed. Twenty years of nothin’ and then I just had to go for the gangster ninja assassin. Sure. Splendid. Why wouldn’t I do that. Completely in character, if nothin’ else._

Hanzo’s phone buzzed again, only twice this time; he snorted as he checked it but wrote an answer before sliding it into his pocket. He turned back to Jesse. “My brother apologizes for accidentally mentally scarring us both. You do not have siblings, do you?”

“Not that I’m aware. I’ve known some of the boys long enough that it’s kinda the same thing, I guess.”

“It is, as they say, a mixed blessing,” Hanzo said. “On the one hand I have been in a constant state of worry for close to twenty years now, on the other… actually no, there is no other hand. That’s it.”  

Jesse grinned into his drink. “Sounds like maybe I dodged a bullet there.”

“...I would not go that far.” There was a quiet, fond lilt to his voice Jesse had never heard before.

 _Fuck_.

Maybe — maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad. It wasn’t as though he’d ever act on it, Jesse told himself. Just because he knew it was there didn’t mean he’d have to do anything about it. It could just… stay a background thing. A, what was the word. No, a less embarrassing word than that. A _crush_ , perhaps. His heart could do its whole newfound pitter-patter tap dance routine now and then, backstage where no one could see it, and otherwise he’d keep it under wraps and act like the goddamn professional he’d been scrambling to pretend to be all these years. Topsy-turvy with the booze and the low lights as he felt he wasn’t dumb or mad enough to think that Hanzo would welcome any advances with anything but, at best and simultaneously worst, pity. This was not a knife edge he was eager to test his throat against.

And yet… even as he thought it the part of him that was always watching itself and was wise to his particular brand of bullshit braced itself for the inevitable hurt.

He did a mental shrug. Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound. Anything that was worth doing was worth doing with panache and gusto, even if that thing was crashing and burning. “Can I interest you in more of the house’s finest damn disgusting swill, Mr. Shimada?”

“Mr. McCree,” Hanzo said, “I thought you would never ask.”   

 

————

 

When the storm ended Jesse didn’t even notice for a while. It was first when Hanzo glanced over his shoulder to the windows and gave a small sound that he realized how light it was out, and that the low but constant howl of the storm had faded somewhere along the way.

Hanzo got up and stood by the huge windows, arms loosely crossed over his chest.

“It would seem the worst has passed,” he said, black hair outlined by the sharp clean light of the dawn. He glanced over as Jesse came up next to him. In the distance they were clearing the runways for snow at a fervent pace, though the inside of the airport had only just started to move out of its torpor. Soon it would be a real mayhem as people scurried to their new gates — but for now it was quiet.

“Seems that way,” Jesse lied blithely, watching his profile, the curl of his mouth.

They paid for their drinks — Jesse hissing between his teeth because well, he’d known it was gonna smart but he’d been trying to keep it out of his mind — and wandered off again, drifting idly through the terminal. Jesse was still tipsy enough that everything felt light and warm, all the sharp edges worn off the world. Hanzo was muttering something under his breath about the architect’s taste in dramatic floor tiles and looking enchantingly snippy while doing it.  

Then the departure board updated and Jesse gave a grunt as his phone buzzed with the alert too. “Well, that’s me, I guess. Better get a move on. Thanks for the company, by the way,” he added, reaching out a hand before he could think better of it. “Saved me from being that weird guy getting shitfaced alone in a corner. It was fun.”

Hanzo blinked at him in surprise.

“Y’know, fun?” Jesse prompted. “Surely you’ve encountered the concept before?”

“Hah. McCree,” Hanzo said, taking Jesse’s outstretched hand and shaking it — you could sense the strength in his fingers even under such a controlled, careful gesture. He was grinning. “I… hm. We will keep in touch.”

“You better, we got a bet to settle now,” Jesse said, feeling mildly delirious. “Come at me whenever you’re ready for a taste of humility, I’m always ready to defend my gun’s honor.”

———

A couple of hours later he sat sleepless and hungover in the window row, leaning his head back against the seat as he replayed Hanzo’s startled laugh in his head again and again.

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank tumblr user callmesherly for helping me out with what kind of drink Hanzo might go for if sake was off the table, and to solivar and bananamilk for lending their expertise on cowboy innuendo for Hanzo trolling Jesse! On another note — ‘leaving the bottle’ does not seem to actually be a Thing outside of movies and/or very special circumstances in most places, so let’s just assume that the bartender heard our two wonderful boys talking ~*inconspicuously*~ and was smart enough to go ‘haha I’m *not* getting paid enough to argue with international crime syndicates, if this weird kid with the hat believes the shit he sees in movies I’m not gonna be the one who corrects him’. (They did not finish that bottle by themselves, btw, the dialogue would have ended up a lot less coherent otherwise lol)
> 
> Also feel free to imagine, years down the line, Sombra finding Jesse’s old… holovid account or whatever they call it and just rubbing her hands together because surely there’s some embarrassing porn in there, there must be, he’s been updating this playlist all through his teens and young adulthood… only to find that no, it really is just every Western ever made, regardless of quality or merit, scrupulously organized like literally nothing else in his life has ever been. Which is, of course, also deeply embarrassing, but in a way that’s hard to exploit because he has exactly no shame about it and he always has at least one backup squirreled away so she can’t even threaten to delete it ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Lastly: There might be nothing funnier to me than the idea of Hanzo doing the social stealth part of the whole ninja bit. Entirely competent (because he would never allow himself to be anything less) but also wearing the most long-suffering FML face once the dupe’s back is turned? — yes good. Title is from a Tom Waits song because I am incorrigible and none of you can stop me. 
> 
>  
> 
> [You can find me on tumblr over here!](https://vaguely-concerned.tumblr.com/)


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